


Be A Little More Specific

by dancinbutterfly



Series: Justified [10]
Category: The Magnificent Seven (2016)
Genre: Aftermath of Human Trafficking, Aftermath of Torture, Aftermath of Violence, Aftermath of sexual slavery, Alternate Universe - Criminals, Alternate Universe - Law Enforcement, Billy and Goodnight are so fucking in love with each other, Cuddling & Snuggling, Discussion of the above topics but no scenes including them, Gen, Gentle Kissing, Human Trafficking, Immigration & Emigration, Intimacy, Lawyers, Legal Drama, Love, M/M, Murder, Past Sexual Abuse, Past Sexual Assault, Racism, Rape Aftermath, Revenge, Slurs, child sex trafficking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-27
Updated: 2019-01-27
Packaged: 2019-10-17 14:19:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,913
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17562062
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dancinbutterfly/pseuds/dancinbutterfly
Summary: Faraday has busted his ass on this immunity document and it is a masterpiece of negotiation and legal craftsmanship. Now if he can just get his client to dot the Ts and cross the Is that would be fucking great.





	Be A Little More Specific

**Author's Note:**

> Head the tags. This section contains some discussion of Billy's experience with people who were abusive, toxic, and racist. Please read with your self care in mind. His history is crucial to this story and while I'm trying to treat it with the care and respect it deserves it is not going anywhere and they're going to talk about it. I'm not going to fetishize or sensationalize it but I am also not pulling my punches. **Read with your self-care in mind.**
> 
> Thanks forever to my dearest decoy-ocelot without whom I would have given up and for the quick and dirty beta. This is for you babou. Thanks also to Togina for getting me unstuck you're a goddamn miracle work. Thanks also to M7 fandom as a whole for not forgetting about me and this story <3

 

>   **ATF Agent Stark:** After everything your brother put her through, you really gonna let her spend the rest of her life in prison for you?  
>  **ATF Agent Keaton:** You know, I was just wondering… Did she screw all your relatives? Or just you two?  
>  **Boyd Crowder:** Now sir, I know you have an investigation to conduct but if you disrespect Ava one more time, I'm gonna come across this table.  
>  A **TF Agent Keaton** : Chief, it seems clear to me that Mr. Crowder just threatened a federal officer. And I would think that that is reason enough for you to take him into custody.  
>  **Chief Deputy US Marshal Art Mullen:** Much as I might like to personally throw Mr. Crowder's ass in a holding cell, I think a threat against a federal officer would be a little more specific, something more along the lines of "if you disrespect miss Crowder again, I'll beat the ever-loving shit out of you."  
>  **Boyd Crowder:** You gonna charge me?
> 
>   
>  -  **Justified** 2.06 _"Blaze of Glory"_

* * *

 

Faraday has written some impressive legal documents in his day. He was a scholarship kid and he had to fight for everything he had in law school and his razzledazzle is the only reason he has anything in this world. His ability to string a sentence together on paper and in a conversation is the magic that has gotten him this far up the federal totem pole. But the deal he's managed to ink out for Billy is Vegas-level sleight of hand. This is some Within-The-Four-Corners-of-the-Document hocus pocus that makes him certain that he deserves that thousand dollar bottle of hooch Goody promised, a blowjob and a fucking raise. This is a thing of beauty that is a joy forever, just like Mary Poppins talked about. He is going to get his copy framed and hang it on the wall next to his diploma.

He likes the sound it makes when he thunks it on hard surfaces. The tone is beautiful in its resonance. It's a joyful goddamn noise. He makes sure to drop it from a height onto Goodnight’s kitchen table for effect. The hollow clunk of over a hundred pages of A1 paper meeting cherrywood is the sound of success.

He really does deserve a drink.

He leaves it on the table and makes for Goodnight's cabinets. The guy is a LEO who isn't in recovery so he's got good shit on his property somewhere. All Faraday has to do is find it and he has a sixth sense about these things. Glasses, he remembers are above the sink but liquor? Hmm.

"Joshua, what am I looking at?" Goodnight asks. He's actually sitting at the table, in a chair, as if he were civilized which is just the biggest load of shit. No one who calls at the unreasonable hours that Goodnight does demanding updates is civilized. His murderous boyfriend has the decency not too look like he belongs in a dining room. How a man in his 40s manages pull off a threadbear Ziggy Stardust t-shirt and jeans that are so torn they expose more skin than they cover and have more stains on them than clean fabric, stains that could be grease or blood or something else or all of the above, is beyond Faraday. It probably has something to do with the way he's positioned, sprawled in the adjacent chair with his bare feet planted firmly in Goody's lap and his focus split between a slowly burning spliff that smells like 420 heaven in a Swisher Sweet and the butterfly knife he's using to pick at his cuticles with.

“You hold in your hands Mr. Rocks' golden ticket."

He is not surprised when he hears Billy hum a piece of the chorus of I've Got a Golden Ticket in response. He's honestly more surprised that he doesn't do something more blatant like ask if Faraday were inviting them to a world of pure imagination or something. The guy has more movie quotes in him than IMDB.

"And for those of us who haven't read Charlie and the Chocolate Factory since we were twelve, can you elaborate? Hey!" Billy must have poked him with his toes from the way Goodnight turns to look at him affronted. "I just said read the damn book. I read Great Glass Elevator as well. Excuse me for wanting some damn specificity when it comes to your welfare, cher."

"Movie's different," Billy says flatly.

"Oh, is it? Are movies different from books? I didn't realize. I had no idea that source material often differed from the adaptation. Please tell me how they changed it, aside from in every way. They got rid of the squirrels you know. And the scene where Charlie and Grandpa steal the fizzy lifting drink? Never happened. Charlie was good and they made him bad for no reason at all."

Billy's eyes roll so hard Faraday thinks he might strain something. Goodnight points a finger at him.

"No. No. Do not. Do not come at me with Gene Wilder's comedic genius as an argument for unnecessary changes to the text."

Billy doesn't speak. He just takes a puff of his smoke and blows out a smoke ring. People still do that apparently.

"Anthony Newley's songwriting cannot be used in this argument. You can still have all those songs and not change the canon, cher!"

Another ring, from the same inhalation.

"And the tunnel scene isn't funny, it's disturbing and the fact that it was visually arresting doesn’t make it better!"

A third ring. Faraday wonders what his blowjobs are like if thats how he smokes. Probably amazing. That must be why Goodnight is willing to be an accessory to murder and make conversation with dead air. It's the only thing that makes any sense.

Billy exhales through his nose, two grey streams of smoke coming out and making Faraday think of cartoon bulls. He tilts his head at Goody and asks in a high pitched British accent that was nothing so much like an entitled little girl "Who ever heard of a snozzberry?" then says with a terrifyingly perfect tonal replica of Gene Wilder's Willy Wonka  "We are the music makers and we are the dreamers of dreams."

Goodnight slumps down, grabs Billy's ankle and smiles. "Mon vainqueur," he sighs and Faraday really needs to look up what that means because it makes Billy smile back, like, really smile. It's only terrifying because knowing what he's done that kind of genuine emotion makes him and his crimes so very relatable. He's going back to looking for the booze, thank you.

"So this golden ticket," Goodnight says, dragging the conversation back to the point. Faraday feels like applauding him. It took some doing coming out of that timewarp. "What does it say?"

"It grants total immunity to major and minor crimes to Mr. Song Byeung-rok aka William ‘Billy’ Rocks up to and including felony first-degree murder, kidnapping, mayhem, which is my favorite way of saying violence of various and sundry types, prior to the date of signing in exchange for cooperation in bringing in a major human trafficking and, this parts really important, a drug trafficking network suspected to work with NPMI but definitely working out of the ports of Gulfport and San Francisco. It also takes care of your citizenship status retroactively because your  I-485 should have been filed years ago when local PD busted the trafficking ring but clearly that didn’t happen so, I handled it because I'm amazing, you're welcome. I threw in the 914 because it establishes you as a victim of human trafficking and the 918 for your status as one of violent crime as well, because I don’t know which one you want to claim but hey, now you can choose, but you should have gotten that taken care of like, 30 years ago. I honestly think your case for a 914 is a lot stronger but, you know, the bit in your statement with the, um, the sadists?” That section, with the cigarettes and the beatings and the, god, all of it, had lead Faraday down a research wikihole seeking an explanation for why this one fucking thing kept him up at night, kept him hip deep in nightmares and taught him that second-hand trauma was a thing. Faraday really should have known was a thing but somehow, in all the years he’s been taking the statements of people in terrible situations, none of it’s  ever been real enough to him to actually effect him the way Billy’s history has. He clears his throat and forces down the mental images his imagination created for him of a teenage boy cut to shit, burned, bleeding and raped from an amalgamation of real sex crime evidence he’s seen over the years and the man sitting across the room from him right now. He clears his throat and continues because if there’s anything thing Billy doesn’t want or need it’s his damage. The work is enough. “Yeah, that could go separately even though its not, legally, separate. Anyway." He claps his hands together because Billy's eyes boring into him are making him sweat like a senator soliciting sex in an airport bathroom in Wisconsin. "There's a lot more but so long as we can get a couple collars under our belt that you're willing to get on the stand and testify for in front of God and the Grand Jury, you sign this and all that ugly killing shit goes away provided," pauses to point a finger at Billy, "You don't kill anyone else once we get ink on this."

"No killing?” Billy seems genuinely upset by this, like a kid who's being threatened with having their video games taken away.

And Faraday gets that. He does. He could recite Billy’s statement from memory like a poem, he had to go over it so many times to write this agreement. It’s a kind of intimacy that probably is only paralleled by what Goody has with Billy because he’s pretty much plastered the worst chapters of the guy’s history on the inside of his brain like particularly ugly wallpaper that he has had to stare at for weeks on end. Faraday would absolutely love to murder the sons of bitches involved for Billy. It would be a genuine pleasure, truly, but if he does, there's no saving Billy anymore. That Faraday managed to get the AG to sign off on this deal is a testament to how serious his boss and the relevant subcommittees are about claiming to want to crack down on child sex trafficking and just how ugly Billy's statement reads all typed up in black and white. Really, when this is all over, Billy’s going to make a mint on the Netflix documentary.

“Sorry man. No killing."

Billy sighs. "Fuck."

"That's the idea. We keep you out of prison, you and Goody can continue to fuck."

Something comes flying across the room at him. Faraday grew up with abusive drunks though, so he dodges what he realizes was Goodnight throwing Billy's shoe. "Dude, I thought you were a sniper."

"I'm retired."

“Yeah, sure, Retired. I'm Thirsty and what Thirsty wants to know where you keep your scotch because that," he points at the deal contract with the hand still holding the tumbler he'd fished out earlier, "deserves a drink."

"Under the sink."

His face is doing something crumpled and unfortunate. "With the cleaning supplies?"

Goody shrugs. "You know my daddy used to say poison is as poison does."

That's just so wrong. It's the most wrong thing he's heard out of all of the wrong things come out of their mouths. "You repulse me."

That doesn’t stop him from ducking down and digging under the sink for something strong. Sure enough, Johnny Walker Black is next to the windex and the lysol. He double checks the bottle is indeed Johnny and not cleaning product before he chugs because his mama raised a fool but not a suicidal maniac, thank you very much. It is heaven on earth as it burns down his gullet and he toasts his hosts and his client, before focusing back on the task at hand. “Read it, all of it, let me know if you have any questions about anything. If you don’t want to read it, I’ll read it to you.”

Billy reaches out and picks up the deal in all its glory and looks down at it. He frowns but that doesn’t concern Faraday. He is fairly certain that when he’s not mooning at Goodnight, frowning is Billy’s natural state.

“Anything I should be on the lookout for?”

“Any time you see the term exonerate, immunity, pardon, in totalis, that sort of thing, read it closely and make sure you feel that I haven’t missed any crime you may have committed. If you think I have?”  He takes another gulp of whiskey for fortification because honestly, he went through his personal library, the legal library at the courthouse, all the textbooks he could dig up through his alma mater that seemed even remotely relevant, and googled some flashy court cases he knows for a fact are unconnected but just wanted to cover his ass on for possible federal statutes. He is pretty sure he covered everything but, maybe not. And well… “You tell me. This is the only time in your life when you want to be sure that all your dirty laundry is properly aerated. Only way to get it clean.”

Billy nods as he flips open to the first page. “Is my sister going to be in this? Or nephew?”

Oh Jesus fuck.  “Do they need to be? Did they do something I need to know about?” Faraday holds his his breath.

“We came here illegally. Jin-sung was born in California but I’m not signing something that’s going to get my sister deported back to fucking Pyongyang and leave him with no mom now that he’s this close to having a real family.”

“Great. Wonderful.” He knocks back the glass, though all he gets is fumes, and leans over his beautiful brief. He flips it over and pulls a pen out of his pocket. He clicks it open and scribbles down their names as best he can guess to spell them. He spins it back around for Billy to check. “Let me know if that looks right. Can you give me date of birth and social if you got them?”

Billy’s face goes pale. “I don’t think I can do that.”

“Do you want them to have immunity or not?”

“Do you have any idea how easy it is to find someone with social security number?” Billy drops his feet out of Goody’s lap and leans forward. “Fuck identity theft, Atticus, it’s a personalized skeleton key.” He taps the back of the brief with his long, graceful index finger. “Give me yours and I’ll show you.”

For a moment, Faraday is a little breathless. No one’s ever compared him to Atticus Finch before and he may actually be a little bit turned on at the compliment. It’s confusing because he’s also a lot scared at the very idea of Billy Rocks having his social security number for any reason. “You know what? I believe you.”

“Attorney client privilege right?”

Faraday nods.

Billy jerks his chin.

Goody sighs and pushes back from the table. “I think I hear the phone.” Never mind that they all have cell phones and there is no phone actually ringing.

Billy looks up at him with this look that Faraday doesn’t even try to interpret because that is not just thanks. He’s never been through the kind of harrowing Billy has but he’s seen survivors and he knows what appreciation looks like in the eyes of survivor and gratitude at a kitchen table is not that soft or that naked.

Goody meets it by lifting Billy’s left hand off the table without a word.  Faraday tries really hard to look away as Goody presses his lips to his knuckles, then kisses his wrist, his temple, then his mouth like he’s leaving for fucking war or something before leaving them alone in the kitchen but he can’t manage it. The sight is just too magnetic. Thing is, Faraday knows plenty of functional couples and he’s even been around some truly happy ones (rare as they are). None of them burn up the room like Goodnight and Billy do when they touch each other. It’s absolutely wild, like something out of the movies Billy can’t stop referencing.  He can’t help marveling at Goodnight bestowing kisses on Billy’s skin the way he just did because it is one of the most genuine yet melodramatic things Faraday has ever seen in his life, and he tries federal cases in open court on a regular basis.

Faraday shakes his head to clear it. Billy is leaned back in his chair, right arm draped over the back, waiting, the kind of patience that he has no doubt has kept him out of the hands of law enforcement agencies across the country for the last 20 years. He sighs and refills his glass before sitting across from him.

“Okay. Okay I’m listening.”

“John Longsbarrow and Hank Vaughn.” Billy says. “I made hard copies of their personnel records out of company files, easy, then used their social security numbers to track down last known address, medical history, legal history, driving record, their family details, hell their charitable donations, everything.” He looks calm he speaks. Faraday would say he seems like he’s recounting the plot of a movie but Faraday knows he would have a readable emotion in his voice if he were relaying a movie plot. “It was easy. “

“You said that.”

“With his social I could check their backgrounds before I did anything and you know what I found?”

Wow does he not.

“At the time they were listed as security and transport consultants. They had W2s for NPMI for every year we were with them and another five odd years before that besides. I don’t know if they ever sold anyone else but they worked the doors and they knocked us out and they made sure we didn’t get away when they moved us from place to place.” 

Faraday watches him and he doesn’t even shift an inch as he speaks. The only movement is the smoke drifting lazily from the forgotten joint resting between his ring and middle fingers.

“Vaughn was muscle but he wasn’t too picky who he was with so long as you sucked his dick without any teeth. Longsbarrow went by Barry and he liked the sibling thing. He liked to have me while Little Joe had Yeon-mi next to us on the same bed. Little Joe is Joe Harris. Joe was like Vaughn, though, wasn’t too picky if he stuck his dick in a boy or a girl ‘so long as that ass was yellow.’” The air quotes don’t need finger quotation marks. Faraday can hear them loud and clear. “Around the time my nephew was born, Yeon-mi saw him on the news representing NPMI in a development deal in Southern California not too far from where she settled. Imagine my surprise when we saw the guy who’d been raping us on the regular in a suit and tie talking about the economic growth of his little patch of ground.”

The thing about Billy that’s different from a lot of his other clients, is that he’s not afraid of the word rape. He’s never quite sure how to take that but he’s always grateful because that makes things significantly easier on him and he’s a selfish asshole that way.  He says none of this at the moment, however, because he’s a little too floored.

“This isn’t in your statement.”

“You didn’t ask for how Yeon-mi was involved. You asked for how NPMI was connected to trafficking and drugs and how I killed them and why I killed the ones I did. That’s in there. You’ll find Joe on page 5 or 6 I think. I didn’t feel compelled to mention shit that wasn’t only mine to tell before I knew her status was at risk.”

Faraday thinks for a second. Fuck. He knows all the names, it’s just that as The Assassin Billy has so many confirmed kills that they get confused, and it takes him a minute to get them straight. “Fuck. He was the first.”

“Yeah. He was too close to Yeon-mi. And then when I got into the NPMI branch office to track him down, I found a half a dozen familiar faces attached to names and that was it.” Billy drags a hand up and through the hair right at his scalp to tug and tighten his ponytail. “I’d found them.”

The number of questions Faraday have are endless. Was his sister living the same city? Was this the same time as the murder or before? Did he only kill people involved in his captivity or was it bigger than that?

These were questions he hadn’t even thought to ask. The fucking Rumsfeld unknown unknown. He can wait until until the deposition and the Grand Jury for most of these though.

“Right. Okay.” He pulls his masterpiece back into his lap with a sigh. No plan survives first contact with the enemy and no first draft survives initial revisions. He really should have known better. “I’m gonna work on this, tweak the language, vaguely, and get back to you. You need to start writing anything you didn’t think was necessary for me to include the first time. You can just put my sister in for Yeon-mi instead of her name, all right? Jesus. Are there more bodies than the ones listed in here?”

Billy shakes his head. “I laid out the Who, Joshua. Barry, Vaughn, and Little Joe are all in there. This really about the Why and the How. You didn’t ask for that.”

“Right. You’re right.” He holds up both hands in defeat. “Which one of us is the lawyer here.”

“I’ve been hiding and running for more than twenty years. No one’s ever caught me.”

Faraday opens his mouth to correct him then stops because goddamnit, Billy’s right. He didn’t get caught. He didn’t even turn himself in. He negotiated a deal that isn’t even a surrender. Faraday snaps his mouth shut so hard his teeth click together before he asks what he’s been dying to know since the first time they met. “How’d you do it?”

“Which part?”

“Keep from getting caught. Hell, no one even really noticed a pattern until recently. To kill that many people over that span of time and get away with it? It’s basically you and the Zodiac Killer. No one does that.”

Billy’s eyebrow quirk’s like Vincent Price, like Stephen Colbert, like Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, like James Bond, like Mr. Spock but the brown eye beneath it has all the feeling of an iceberg. “I’ve been living like people are out to get me since I was too young to shave, counselor. Whether they actually were or not was irrelevant.” He tilts his head to the side, considering, then adds. “You know, the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was to convince the world he doesn’t exist. And like that.” He lifts his hand and blows on his fingers in a pitch perfect Verbal Kint impression. “He’s gone.”

~*~*~

**Author's Note:**

> Notes!
> 
>   * So, the forms Faraday mentions? Real. I may have gotten the numbers wrong but unless something has changed (and I dont think they have, not even with the shutdown) foreign victims of violent crimes which take place in the USA are entitled to apply for special visas That is NOT the same as the typical asylum requests that are being fucked up SO royally now and doesnt necessarily mean that in our current clusterfuck a person wouldnt be detained. But with a sympathetic judge and a cop signing off on it going "no, I wokred this case, this was awful, they qualify" you actually came have an undocumented person get around the normal problems if they're a victim of a crime. Is that terrible? YEAH. but at least there's a recourse for people who get raped and trafficed. Guys. IF YOU OR SOMEONE YOU KNOW IS BEING ABUSED OR TRAFFICKED CALL A HELP LINE. THERE ARE ALLIES WHO WILL GO TO FUCKING BAT FOR YOU AND WILL PROTECT YOUR RIGHTS OKAY? I SWEAR TO GOD THEY WILL AND I KNOW IT BECAUSE I'VE WORKED IN IT.*clambers off soapbox*
>   * I have so many opinions on book vs movie with Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and that is as someone who LOVES the movie. If you want to hear them? Hit me up in the comments but needless to say, I just imagine that Billy won the argument in the 90s by singing Pure Imagination to Goody once through as they walked down a poorly lit street in Columbus when they couldn't hold hands and that, as they say, was that though they still had the fight a lot because it was fun and it often ended the same way and Goody liked that ending.
>   * Movie references! 
>
>> _"A thing of beauty is a joy forever"_ \- quote from Mary Poppins  
>  _The entire film but specifically "I've Got a Golden Ticket"_ \- song from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Anthony Newley who wrote all the music for that and Doctor Doolittle and just generally amazing 60s and 70s musicals. _"_  
>  _"We are the Music Makers and We are the Dreamers of Dreams _" -  poem called Ode by Arthur O'Shaughnessy but is referenced by Billy to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.__  
>    
>  _Atticus Finch -_ the righteous lawyer protagonist of To Kill A Mocking Bird who fought for an innocent black man who was unjustly accused of raping a white woman in segregated Alabama. The role was played famously by the famously handsome Gregory Peck.  
>  It's a great movie and all but READ THE BOOK.  
>  "You know, the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was to convince the world he doesn’t exist. And like that - he's gone." - closing quote from The Usual Suspects  
> 
> 
> __
>   * I headcanon Goody as having learned the ways of [la chancla](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSicdnahJ7o) from the wife of a medic he was deployed with in Iraq and just with that tool in his armada ever since. 
>   * I HATE Donald Rumsfeld so fucking much. That man is part of the reason our country is where it is now geopolitically. But goddamnit if he wasn't right(not in reference to weapons of mass destruction just, you know, theoretically in terms of knowledge itself) about the known knowns, the known unknowns and the unknown unknowns. It goes like this:  _Reports that say that something hasn't happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns—the ones we don't know we don't know. And if one looks throughout the history of our country and other free countries, it is the latter category that tend to be the difficult ones._  *throws up hands* damnit yall, that's fucking true.  You can't know what it is that you don't know you don't know. I HATE IT WHEN PEOPLE I LOATHE ARE NOT WRONG! ARRRGH! Fine. Even a broke clock's right twice a day. I'm a big enough person to admit that. Fuck. If you're still confused have[ Samuel L Jackson breaking it down on the Boondocks. It's easier to stand that way. ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2msQwpzatQc)
>   * I spent a lot of time getting this where it is and I think that is where it needs to be to move forward. Thank fuck. Hope you like it.
> __ 



End file.
